Revival: Ms. Pac-Man

I don't know much about monitors, like I was saying. I know that cap kit and flybacks seem to be required maintenance 90% of the time. If the flybacks usually don't fail on these, then I will skip that. I will do caps though, Once I get the board fixed. I ordered a bunch of parts from Arcadeshop, for both this and my Gyruss I picked up. They charged me for it today, I'm hoping that maybe by this weekend I will have parts! I've had good luck with them in the past.
 
Here's the one that had less than 10 hours and brought the fire department over.
c3a1b9b87a4c17894b968ba7e2430100.jpg
 
Imo, always keep an original working fly over a cheap China replacment.

Yup. I was chasing an issue on a Sanyo 20EZ where it kept blowing cap C467. Turns out, the issue was a shorted pot control board attached to the Fly. (On Sanyo flys, this control board is separate.)

Anyway, during my troubleshooting process, I replaced the fly with a reproduction. However, the repo, will occasional make a snap sound and then the screen rolls horizontally.

Luckily, I kept the original flyback and I'm probably going to re-install it.

Moral of the story: "New is not always better"
 
On some chassis's I would agree but with the k4900, they just don't seem to fail. The k4900 is a very reliable chassis. Imo, always keep an original working fly over a cheap China replacment. I've had some of the replacments fail with less than 10 hours of use. One I put in a friend's chassis blew so much smoke out when it went, his neighbors called the fire department.

The fact that you can buy the replacement flybacks for a 40ish year old chassis in many places suggests that the original flyback failure is less than "rare".

Once again I don't want to be put in the position of defending something that I really don't have much of an opinion on. I just do it because the chassis is out. I might do otherwise if I had a flyback tester. I haven't bought one yet so if it's original (and 40yrs old) I replace it.
 
The fact that you can buy the replacement flybacks for a 40ish year old chassis in many places suggests that the original flyback failure is less than "rare".

Once again I don't want to be put in the position of defending something that I really don't have much of an opinion on. I just do it because the chassis is out. I might do otherwise if I had a flyback tester. I haven't bought one yet so if it's original (and 40yrs old) I replace it.

Let's just say this:

If you compare the G07 to the 4900.....

On average, you'll change the flyback on a 100 G07's before you change ONE 4900. True story.

Even MORE reliable is the flyback on the 4600 series chassis. In 15 years of arcade collecting, I've never seen a 4600 with a legitimate flyback failure. Never.
 
There are things that warrant changing the fly. Cracks in the body, not the front cover. Cracks in the anode wire. Arching, can't focus or get full brightness. Doing it just for good measure doesn't seem logical but maybe that's just me.
The fact that you can buy the replacement flybacks for a 40ish year old chassis in many places suggests that the original flyback failure is less than "rare".

Once again I don't want to be put in the position of defending something that I really don't have much of an opinion on. I just do it because the chassis is out. I might do otherwise if I had a flyback tester. I haven't bought one yet so if it's original (and 40yrs old) I replace it.
 
Let's just say this:

If you compare the G07 to the 4900.....

On average, you'll change the flyback on a 100 G07's before you change ONE 4900. True story.

Even MORE reliable is the flyback on the 4600 series chassis. In 15 years of arcade collecting, I've never seen a 4600 with a legitimate flyback failure. Never.
Haha, yep, pretty sure G07 flys come with M80's in them.
 
Let's just say this:

If you compare the G07 to the 4900.....

On average, you'll change the flyback on a 100 G07's before you change ONE 4900. True story.

Even MORE reliable is the flyback on the 4600 series chassis. In 15 years of arcade collecting, I've never seen a 4600 with a legitimate flyback failure. Never.





There are things that warrant changing the fly. Cracks in the body, not the front cover. Cracks in the anode wire. Arching, can't focus or get full brightness. Doing it just for good measure doesn't seem logical but maybe that's just me.

I heard you. Rare, fire, unnecessary. I'm not the advocate for changing that flyback.

Let's stop derailing this poor guy's thread.
 
No, It's not a problem! De-rail away! Every bit of this I read, the more I learn!

Eh the really good advice isn't to be had first half of a Monday.

Seriously even though the focus gets weird sometimes there is ton of great technical advice in this forum.

I'm hooked. Looking forward to see you get this Ms Pac up and running
 
No, It's not a problem! De-rail away! Every bit of this I read, the more I learn!

Well, O.K. I'll de-rail. How is the Gyruss that you picked up?

Seriously, congratulations on the pick ups! This is a great addiction...Err I mean "hobby". This forum have a bunch of good folks willing to help. Can't wait to see the end result.
 
Today, the Parts from Arcadeshop.com came in the mail. So it's show time! First and foremost, I put the new switcher in the Gyruss, and its back to 100% now. So it is on to the Ms. Pac-man work. I ordered a cap kit for the game boards, a new ribbon cable, and the stuff to replace the fingerboard, and edge connectors.

First up, was the Cap kit. Everything went well, although I did catch myself making a mistake, and corrected it before it was a problem. The old caps had the arrows and indicators pointing for the positive side, the new ones were the opposite, where the arrows and indicators were for negative. I corrected the 2 caps I put on backwards, and replace the rest.

picture.php


picture.php


once that was done, I decided to tackle the fingerboard. I had seen others on this forum fix the fingerboards with metal tape. I wasn't happy with that idea, It seems like it is a band-aid fix. Not saying anything bad against anyone else that has done this, but I don't want to have to mess with this problem again. Cruising though the old threads on here, I ran across The Real Bob Roberts' method of fixing it once and for all.
http://www.therealbobroberts.net/pace.html
I understand that Mr. Roberts isn't in business anymore, so I set out to build my own version of his work.

I decided to use a 44 pin end connector, and a fingerboard that is normally used to make a JAMMA to other harness adapter.

picture.php


Had to chop up the fingerboard to make it work.

picture.php


Once I was done mocking everything up, It was party time. Soldering the connector onto the board went well. I only had to extend one pin, that was burned off, with some wire. Everything else lined up and worked well.

picture.php
 
Last edited:
Once the connector was soldered on, and firmly attached, I cut down the fingerboard, and shoved it onto the board connector.

picture.php


Now its time to replace the old 44 pin connector. I opted for a soldered connector, rather than Molex. I swapped wires over one at a time, What a pain in the ass, especially with the harness still in the cab.

picture.php


picture.php


I checked and double checked my wiring, and everything, then Powered it back on again.
So, no real changes, It still has a green screen, and it still is not playing blind. Although, Now I have a hum though the speaker, that wasn't there before, and I can manipulate with the volume wheel. I have a feeling that this is all related to power still, as I still have 3.5 vac at the plug on half the pins that should have 7 vac, like I said before. I also need to clean and reseat all the chips still.

Progress is Progress....
 
Last edited:
Once the connector was soldered on, and firmly attached, I cut down the fingerboard, and shoved it onto the board connector.

picture.php


Now its time to replace the old 44 pin connector. I opted for a soldered connector, rather than Molex. I swapped wires over one at a time, What a pain in the ass, especially with the harness still in the cab.

picture.php


picture.php


I checked and double checked my wiring, and everything, then Powered it back on again.
So, no real changes, It still has a green screen, and it still is not playing blind. Although, Now I have a hum though the speaker, that wasn't there before, and I can manipulate with the volume wheel. I have a feeling that this is all related to power still, as I still have 3.5 vac at the plug on half the pins that should have 7 vac, like I said before. I also need to clean and reseat all the chips still.

Progress is Progress....

solid work, man. love the fingerboard method, did that in my ms pac
 
The hum is usually edge connector related. Clean and check the fuse holders, they are know problems in this game. Also the wires sometimes fray or break where they are soldered to the fuse holders. I usually just replace them for good measure in pacs and ms pacs.
 
Clean and check the fuse holders, they are know problems in this game. Also the wires sometimes fray or break where they are soldered to the fuse holders. I usually just replace them for good measure in pacs and ms pacs.

+1

I just replaced the fuse block on my Pac-Man. My Pac-Man was operating perfectly fine and the original fuse block was actually in pretty good shape but I keep hearing they are "ticking time bombs" so I decided to perform some preventative maintenance.

You can obtain drop-in replacements at arcadepartsandrepair.com:

4 block fuse holder

2 block fuse holder

You should also watch John's video where he replaces the edge connector and fuse block in his Pac-Man cabaret.
 
Last edited:
There are things that warrant changing the fly. Cracks in the body, not the front cover. Cracks in the anode wire. Arching, can't focus or get full brightness. Doing it just for good measure doesn't seem logical but maybe that's just me.

Lots of idiots here argue with that simple logic and shotgun everything.

Not a fan of changing them out either.
 
Lots of idiots here argue with that simple logic and shotgun everything.

Not a fan of changing them out either.

Normally I agree with you, but with a G07 that's an exception. I put a new fly in them EVERY time I get one, at the same time I do caps. I've watched WAY too many original flybacks explode very shortly after a cap kit to go through THAT nonsense again. It's WAY worth the extra $20 to not have to rebuild the monitor again more than 50% of the time.
 
Back
Top Bottom